Richard’s sudden inactivity probably had something to do with events in the political world. Morden’s proposal was edging closer to a Council vote, and as it gained attention, old arguments were raised. The anti-Dark side dug up every crime and atrocity the Dark mages of Britain had committed over the past hundred years, while the pro-alliance side accused them of witch-hunting and pointed to everything the Council had done wrong over the same period. Neither side had any shortage of material to draw upon, and as the date drew closer, the arguments became increasingly nasty. For most members of magical society the events in the Council were way over their heads, but you didn’t have to know much about mage politics to see that battle lines were being drawn.

In the meantime, I kept looking for a teacher for Luna. I didn’t make any instant progress, which was more or less what I’d expected. Chance mages are underrepresented on the Council, and the one or two I found who seemed as though they might be a good fit weren’t taking new students. I put out some feelers, let my contacts know that I was looking for a chance teacher, payment negotiable, and kept looking.

But mostly, the thing keeping me busy was my new job with Caldera.

| | | | | | | | |

“This is so utterly stupid,” I told Caldera.

Caldera didn’t look up from her screen. We were in her office, and she’d been typing for the past ten minutes.

I leant back in my chair in disgust. “We could have caught this guy two days ago. We knew where he was and where he was going to be. Now he’s God knows where and we’ve got zero chance of finding him.”

“We didn’t have authorisation for an arrest.”

“You mean ‘don’t.’ We still don’t have authorisation, despite the fact that we asked the day before yesterday, and again yesterday, and again today, which your higher-ups still haven’t gotten around to answering, which would have taken them all of ten seconds—”

“Would you stop whining?”

“How can you be so calm about this?”

The subject of our conversation was a Dark mage who went by the name of Torvald. He’d drawn Council attention by shooting up an adept bar—according to the reports, Torvald had been given the brush-off by some girl he’d had his eye on, and while he was still smarting from that, an adept had made the mistake of hitting on the same girl and succeeding where Torvald had failed. Torvald, who clearly did not handle rejection well, had expressed his unhappiness with this turn of events by applying lightning bolts to the adept, the girl, the bar, and several other people in the vicinity. The casualty count at the end of the evening had been six injured (two seriously) and most of the bar—luckily Torvald left before the police and fire brigade showed up, or there probably would have been fatalities. Caldera had been out in Shepherd’s Bush on another call, so she’d sent me to handle things instead.